Lifetime risk of undergoing surgery for pelvic organ prolapse.

Objectives: The report describes the strategic design, steps to full implementation and outcomes achieved by the Western Australian Data Linkage System (WADLS), instigated in 1995 to link up to 40 years of data from over 30 collections for an historical population of 3.7 million. Staged development has seen its expansion, initially from a linkage key to local health data sets, to encompass links to national and local health and welfare data sets, genealogical links and spatial references for mapping applications. Applications: The WADLS has supported over 400 studies with over 250 journal publications and 35 graduate research degrees. Applications have occurred in health services utilisation and outcomes, aetiologic research, disease surveillance and needs analysis, and in methodologic research. Benefits: Longitudinal studies have become cheaper and more complete; deletion of duplicate records and correction of data artifacts have enhanced the quality of information assets; data linkage has conserved patient privacy; community machinery necessary for organised responses to health and social problems has been exercised; and the commercial return on research infrastructure investment has exceeded 1000%. Most importantly, there have been unbiased contributions to medical knowledge and identifiable advances in population health arising from the

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A decade of data linkage in Western Australia: strategic design, applications and benefits of the WA data linkage system

https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(11)61087-8.pdf

Child maltreatment : variation in trends and policies in six developed countries

Linked administrative databases offer a powerful resource for studying important public health issues. Methods developed and implemented in several jurisdictions across the globe have achieved high-quality linkages for conducting health and social research without compromising confidentiality. Key data available for linkage include health services utilization, population registries, place of residence, family ties, educational outcomes, and use of social services. Linking events for large populations of individuals across disparate sources and over time permits a range of research possibilities, including the capacity to study low-prevalence exposure-disease associations, multiple outcome domains within the same cohort of individuals, service utilization and chronic disease patterns, and life course and transgenerational transmission of health. Limited information on variables such as individual-level socioeconomic status (SES) and social supports is outweighed by strengths that include comprehensive foll...

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-031210-100700

Administrative Record Linkage as a Tool for Public Health Research

https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/26000/2/01_Vatsalan_A_Taxonomy_of_2013.pdf

Emma L. Brook

Papers

A decade of data linkage in Western Australia: strategic design, applications and benefits of the WA data linkage system

Public good through data linkage: measuring research outputs from the Western Australian Data Linkage System